By Stewart N. Thorpe of Citizen Press Revolution
Book Recommendation: The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
The patriachal rule is alive and well.
Women are still treated more as things than men are even close as being treated. In our society, a women's beauty is carried as more important for her personally, economically, politically, and socially than it does for a man. She is constantly told she is inferior by a constant bombardment of artificially beautiful images.
When she is sexually harassed, the case for sexual harassment is determined if she "provoked" it is measured through the eyes of men instead of the eyes of women. If she doesn't dress "sexy", she becomes invisible in the work place and often in social environments as well. If she does dress even moderately "sexy", if she is sexually harassed, the courts investigate it if she "provoked" it by her clothes and manners. And this is determined with the definations and interpertations from the man's point of view. One study's survey reported that 88% of women reported to experience or observe sexual harassment in the work place.
Women are conditioned to be so insecure and to undervalue themselves that job recruiters sometimes refer a way to weed out women for a job classified is by posting the exact same job at a higher salary. Female applications drop off when a higher salary is posted.
I am a far cry from a metrosexual. Some would even call me a slob. However, masculinity doesn't mean that one cannot be self-conscious of one's image. It isn't that masculinity is dying, but that self-consciousness, insecurities, and emphasis on image over substance is now increasing all around in our society.
It is also another indication that a patriachal society is pervasive and thriving in our society when femininity is by default assumed to be naturally insecure and excessively self-conscious while it is somehow unnatural for men to be so as well. Few people stop and think that maybe these traits, as they are prevalent today, are not natural at all, but a product of constant conditioning by a culture.
The days when women were conditioned to be perfect housewives may be ending. The patriachal system can no longer control women with the myth that every women ought to be and can be a happy, perfect housewife. The control has shifted to controlling women and men's interactions with women with the myth of beauty. Don't misunderstand me. This isn't a conspiracy, but an unconscious evolution of the patriachal systematic rule over women.
Nerarly all women are made or feel inferior if they are not beautiful to the ideals of this society. While women are expected to dress and be beautiful at the work place, the same emphasis is not on men. Women actors and public figures often are faded out career-wise as their beauty fades out. Men are not affected by their aging looks which are even glorified as being "distinguished". There are a large ratio of difference between older men in public figure careers, like movie stars, and older women in the same careers.
This is because the value which society places on women is not on the women's deeds or her words. It lies on her beauty and her youth.
Equality can never be realized into the myth of beauty is destroyed itself from the culture.
The great enemy against women in our society isn't blatant chauvanism. It is much more subversive and convinces man and woman alike.
The enemy that stands in the way of equality between gender is the culture of beauty itself.
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
